Teams365 Blog

Daily tips, tools and blog posts for leaders and their teams. Daily posts since January 2014. The Teams365 blog is brought to you by Jennifer Britton, founder of Potentials Realized, and author of Effective Group Coaching and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.

For decades we have known the power of a team charter or a team having a set of shared agreements about what is acceptable, or unacceptable on the team. These are behavioral agreements around “how things are done around here”. Having an explicitly created set of team agreements can serve to avoid some of the more negative, and toxic behaviors which can emerge.

Increasingly research is pointing to the importance of team agreements - take a look at Charles Duhigg’s article on Google’s high performing team experience, or refer to what Amy Edmonston refers to as psychological safety.

Time Required: 15 – 60 minutes

Materials needed – White board, breakouts and/or annotation

Who For? Newly forming teams, teams which are wanting to be even more exceptional, project teams, teams that are struggling

Instructions:Teams which excel have a set of shared agreements around how they want to operate as a team. This is also seen as “What is acceptable and what is not acceptable in our team”. “It’s how we do things around here”. It’s “our values in action”

Get team members to first consider the question : What are the behaviors and agreements you want to have in place so that you can do your best work?”

Creating a team charter can be done in several ways –

As a large group where everyone suggests one item at a time, which is captured on a white board and then agreed upon OR

First team members meet in smaller breakouts to discuss what they see as agreements, which they then bring back and share with the larger team as individuals or breakout groups

Depending on the number of agreements generated, you may wan t to capture them first and then vote on which are the top ones for the team OR to create the most amount of buy-in, have team members share their proposed agreements and then individually agree upon them, and what they mean for everyday behaviors.

What is important in this dialogue is the discussion and agreement across the team. It is also important for the team to have discussion around what does each agreement look like “in action” or behaviorally. For example, if we agree to “start work on time” what does that look like? Does that mean you are in the office? Does it mean you are in the lunch room, in the office starting the day, or does it mean that you are on your computer ready to work when the work day starts.With teams it is important to get “granular” and very detailed around what is, and what is not, acceptable on the team.

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Author

Jennifer Britton - Known for her writing and work in the areas of teamwork, leadership, team and group coaching, Jenn is the founder of Potentials Realized, and a former team leader with global organizations including the UN. She is passionate about helping teams and organizations to do their best work. Potentials Realized is a performance improvement company providing training, coaching and facilitation services.

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